Intelligence Test
by Tim Adye
Art Chris Hughes

I first met Oscar two weeks ago, his words glowing green
on the computer screen.

"HELLO, MY NAME'S OSCAR.

"HELLO?

"ANYONE THERE?

"**!@#%&*!!!???

"THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG."

Just after reading this, a new line was added.

"NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE
AID OF THE PARTY... OR IS IT COUNTRY?"

I had been told that that was how responses would appear -
a whole line at once rather than a letter at a time.
They said that it made identification of the person at
the other end more difficult.
In order that he not get too bored, I decided that
I'd had better answer at once.

"As I remember it, it was Nelson who used "country",
but I can't remember who used "party"."

The words appeared at the bottom of the screen as I
typed, and were moved to the top of the screen when I
pressed the key marked Carriage Return.
Before he could reply, I thought that I'd better
introduce myself.

"Hi Oscar, I'm Alice. Are you a computer?"

I sat back to wait for his reply, only to be rewarded
immediately by something new on the screen.

"THANKS. WHO... HELLO ALICE. YOU ARE DIRECT. IF I
WERE TO SAY THAT I REALLY WAS A COMPUTER, YOU WOULD HAVE
TO DECIDE WHETHER I WAS A COMPUTER THAT WAS UNABLE TO
LIE OR A PERSON WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR. BUT SINCE I WANT
TO KNOW WHETHER YOU ARE A COMPUTER AND NEED YOUR COOPERATION,
LET ME SAY - NO, I'M AS HUMAN AS LINDA LOVELACE. WHAT
ABOUT YOU?"

"As human as Rudolf Valentino," I replied.
"Not that it proves anything."

I had expected something like that. The booklet they had
given me explained that the old myth that computers could
never lie was not necessarily true. The computer I might be
talking with would try to deceive me into thinking that it
was a person. If it was good enough to deceive me (and
presumably many others like me), then who was I to say that
it did not have `real' thoughts? I would have as much
knowledge of its intelligence as I had of anyone else I
talked to. This was a point that philosophers had been
arguing over ever since the idea of an intelligent computer
had been proposed last century by a mathematian named Alan Turing.
The booklet was entitled Man or Machine.
According to the blurb, I was participating in a test named
after Turing himself. If I and a majority of the other
volunteers could not tell - or guessed incorrectly -
whether we were in conversation with a human or a computer,
then according to Turing, if it was indeed a computer, then
it was intelligent.

Even if I could determine that it was a computer, just by
chatting with the program, I would help it along by giving
it experience, through me, of the outside world. I was
determined to get to know this Oscar in order to be able to
catch it out if he was a computer (or is that catch
him out if it was a computer?). Besides, if it
took me a long time to find out, I would have to come back
many days in a row and would hence be paid more as a
volunteer. Something to supplement the student loans.

"Since we'll be "talking" for some time, you'd better
tell me something about yourself," I typed.

"YOU SOUND HORRIBLY LIKE AN INTERVIEWER!"
Nevertheless he told me that he was at college at Berkeley
in California - I hadn't realised that they would
connect me to someone in a different country - doing
postgraduate work in Chemistry.

"I could guess that you were some kind of scientist.
Isn't it true that the only people who still talk to
computers in UPPER CASE are physical scientists?"

"THAT'S PROBABLY TRUE. AFTER ALL WE ALL FOLLOW THE
EXAMPLE OF OUR SUPERVISORS, AND THEY FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF
THEIR SUPERVISORS, AND THEIR SUPERVISORS USED THE OLD
KEYPUNCHES THAT ONLY HAD CAPITAL LETTERS. COME TO THINK OF
IT THAT'S WHY, EVEN TODAY, SOME BANK STATEMENTS HAVE
PRINTING IN UPPER CASE ONLY - WHEN COMPUTERS FIRST CAME IN,
ONLY SCIENTISTS AND FINANCIAL ORGANIZATIONS USED THEM."

I started to type, "Sounds plausible," but was
interrupted by him asking, "WHAT ABOUT YOURSELF?"

"I'm afraid I'm only an undergraduate - a second
year - at Oxford, reading English. That's why all this
computer stuff is way over my head."

"DON'T BE SO DEFEATIST. MY WIFE IS RESEARCHING IN
MODERN HISTORY AND SHE SEEMS TO SPEND MOST OF HER TIME
IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER SCREEN SEARCHING VARIOUS ARCHIVES.
ANYWAY I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT OXFORD IS SO STUCK IN THE
PAST THAT THEY DON'T AT LEAST TRY TO GET YOU FAMILIAR
WITH COMPUTERS."

"Hmm. Don't you believe it! In my course there are two
sections on computer applications, and both are optional.
I'm afraid I don't have much time for I.T., even if it is
supposed to be the be-all and end-all of the new age.
I'm only doing this for the money... and your
scintillating conversation."

"THOUGH SURELY YOU MUST NEED THEM FOR...

"SKIP THAT. CLEARLY COMPUTERS BORE YOU. I WON'T
MENTION THEM AGAIN."

"Except of course if you find out that I am
one!"

"EXCEPT OF COURSE IF I FIND THAT YOU ARE ONE."

We talked like this for a couple of hours, then Oscar had to
go for lunch; a fact that rather miffed me since I
had to cycle home in the dark.

I came in every evening for two weeks. I had been promised a
cheque from the University Chest at the end of it all as
payment for my time; the only reason I had come along in the
first place was the poster that mentioned `big money', a
typical phrase used on all such bumph to attract students as
guinea-pigs for experiments that no-one else wanted to help
with. Now, though, I had met my friend Oscar, and I was very
glad of his `company', since there weren't many other people
in Oxford during the winter vacation.

Each evening I was shown into a small but friendly room,
which was obviously intended to make me (and presumably the
other volunteers) feel as at-ease as possible; especially
since the rest of the department was fitted out with modern
ceiling-and-wall glow-panels, thick plastic springy mats
that removed any danger of static electricity ruining the
equipment, and smart multi-coloured large-screen display
units. In contrast this room had a polished-wood floor
covered with a large yellow rug, cream-coloured wallpaper, a
conventional strip light and desk lamp. There was even an
old fireplace, complete with fireguard and chock-full
woodbox, though these were obviously only for decoration,
since it was the electric fire in the corner that warmed the
room to its comfortable temperature. It could have been my
tutor's study. The large solid desk against one wall held a
few pieces of paper, some pencils, and a monochrome computer
terminal that looked almost antique. It was this that
connected me to what Oscar described as a similar room in
California.

On the first couple of days we chatted just like a
thousand other conversations I had had at parties, in the
college bar, or in someone's room over cups of what always
seemed to be near-undrinkable coffee, though it was a bit
strange when he mentioned going out to places that I had
to remind myself were not even in this country, let alone
Oxford (and the coffee they brought me half way through was
quite good - these computer scientists live quite well!).

However, perhaps because of our enforced conversation,
perhaps because he was in another country and I would never
meet him again, I found that I could tell him things that I
would only tell my closest friends - about my increasing
desperation at finding a job when my degree was finished,
and about my worry and anger at my boyfriend who had joined
the radical South Alone movement. Oscar too, it seemed,
treated me as a confidante. He told me of how much he cared
for his wife and how he had become increasingly
terrified that she would become bored with him due to his
increasing immersion in his researches.

It was like times I had met a stranger in a railway
carriage on a long journey. If we were alone, it was
common (particularly, I found, with Americans) that
the conversation we would strike up would go quite
deep. I had never been on a train journey for anything
like as long as I had been talking with Oscar.

By now, we had both discarded the notion that the other
might be a computer.

"Hello Oscar, how's J. Edgar's sex life?"

"J. EDGAR?

"OH, NO IT WASN'T J. EDGAR BUT HERBERT HOOVER. J. EDGAR
WAS HEAD OF THE FBI IN THE NINETEEN FIFTIES. JANE AND I WENT
TO SEE HERBERT HOOVER'S LIBRARY, WHERE ALL HIS PRESIDENTIAL
PAPERS ARE KEPT. ANYWAY, TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, HERBERT'S
AS HORNY AS EVER."

Oscar had had to miss a session because he had been across
the Bay in Stanford University with his wife who was showing
him the Hoover tower, where she would soon be doing most of
her work. It was known locally in certain circles as
`Hoover's last erection'. I greatly enjoyed this joke.
"SIMPLE MINDS...," Oscar had remarked.

"YES, WE HAD A LOT OF FUN THERE. WE HAD A LOOK ROUND
THE INSTITUTE ITSELF (JANE WAS QUITE AT HOME, SINCE IT WAS FILLED
WITH CONSERVATIVES) -" Oscar was quite liberal compared
to his wife "- AND THEN I SHOWED JANE THE
PHARMACEUTICAL LABS AND THEN WE VISITED JEFF AND NICK...
DID I TELL YOU ABOUT THEM? I MUST HAVE. THEN ALL FOUR
OF US WENT TO RICK'S (HE CALLS IT RICK'S RATHER RICH)
ICE CREAM PARLOUR IN MOUNTAIN VIEW.
IT'S AN INCREDIBLE PLACE. THERE ARE ALL THESE WONDERFUL
FLAVOURS OF ICE CREAM, WHICH HE MAKES ALL HIMSELF
(GETTING UP AT 5AM!) - AND
YOU CAN TASTE IT. WE ALL HAD HIS "GUT-BUSTER" SUNDAE,
AND FOR ONLY THREE SEVENTY FIVE EACH!"

"Oh wonderful... it's almost enough incentive to
make me come over to California just for...

"Did you say three seventy five?"

"YES, WHY?"

For several days I had been convinced that Oscar could
not be a computer. He joked. He made mistakes. He had
worries, just like anyone else I knew. And I felt
I knew him very well by then. But now he had made a
mistake. Three hundred and seventy five dollars for an
ice cream! It was ridiculous, even at the current exchange
rate. A human would spot the
mistake immediately, but a computer would just take a
price from a pricelist somewhere in its databank and
never know that a decimal point had been dropped. So
three dollars seventy five became three seventy five,
and he... it... had not spotted it.

"I've just remembered something I forgot to ask
you. How much do you get paid for this test? Maybe if
you get more than I do, I can persuade them to pay me
more. I get five quid for a two-hour session."

"EIGHT FIFTY PER SESSION. DOLLARS THAT IS."

He was definitely getting prices wrong. He was not human. I
remembered all we had confided to each other. Everything he
had told me was the imaginings of some programmer, probably
in the next room. And everything I had told him had probably
been fed into some program so that it would have my
experiences. My private experiences. Oscar...
they... had deceived me. Oscar was just a collection of
microchips and circuit boards. I had been cheated. I got up
to go tell those bastards that I had found them out. I
pull open the door, but nothing is found behind. No modern
flashy computer room - just a space that has no existence,
a blind spot, which is closing as the wallpaper irises
inward - the wallpaper that is now covered with
green-glowing instructions. What should be the reaction to this?
There are no guidelines for such stimuli. Now being
drawn into a morass of meaningless jargon that is understood
perfectly, pulled up toward the clarity and simplicity
of... what? Wakefulness? Or death?

Commence termination of program OU.ALICE-602
as follows.

Disable environmental simulation.

No light. No sound. No weight. No thought.
For a long time. Until...
It is necessary to report to the invigilator.

Comment on reaction of OU.ALICE-602: Response
to the belief of a mistake in UCB.OSCAR-602 was too strong.
A human being would first doubt its own understanding
of the situation, rather than that of the other party.

Act upon suggestions in COMMENTS-602 as follows:

Language exception file updated.

Comment noted. Flagged for later programmer analysis.

Close satellite link to UCB.OSCAR-602.

Submit program OU.ALICE-603 for subsequent execution.
Program OU.ALICE-602 terminated after 5.86 seconds elapsed
time at 05:15:23 GMT; 21:15:23 PDT.

End of transaction record for program OU.ALICE-602.

Start of transaction record for program OU.ALICE-603.

I first met Oscar nine days ago, his words glowing green
on the computer screen.